


Hoping, healing, one step at a time

by samariumwriting



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Developing Relationship, Friendship, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:34:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21653083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samariumwriting/pseuds/samariumwriting
Summary: Felix hoped for many things. He just knew the hope was futile. He hated that he hoped in the way everyone else did, knowing more than anything that his hopes would come to nothing. His optimism had dried up so long ago, and hope was all that remained.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Ingrid Brandl Galatea & Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	Hoping, healing, one step at a time

**Author's Note:**

> My college runs a four times a term creative paper type thing and each term I submit a four part piece of fiction - this term I went feral and just wrote childhood friends fics.  
> So, fun challenge if you fancy it - work out what the one word theme was for each segment. I hope this translates decently to a single piece, and I hope you enjoy :)

He’d never dared think about something like hope. Hope was for fools, for those reaching out in the dark, expecting nothing but still seeing everything, somehow. He didn’t have the luxury to entertain something so trivial, so baseless, so-

Felix hoped for many things. He just knew the hope was futile. He hated that he hoped in the way everyone else did, knowing more than anything that his hopes would come to nothing. His optimism had dried up so long ago, and hope was all that remained.

He hoped for salvation. Not for himself, because he knew so much better than to ask for something he didn’t even know if he wanted, but for...for Dimitri. He hoped that Dimitri could- he didn’t even know.

It had been a year since they’d last spoken, properly, as the friends they were meant to be (the friends they used to be, but weren’t anymore, because hoping just wasn’t enough and he knew that now). He didn’t know how Dimitri was doing, but he hoped against all hope that he was okay. 

Hope was for fools, and it was because of Dimitri that Felix knew that. They’d both hoped that things would sort themselves out. That the gap between them wouldn’t grow any wider, that the cracks forming would heal without any real effort between them.

They’d both hoped beyond anything else that it would just...that things would change for the better between them. But it hadn’t. So hope was for fools because hope couldn’t fix a single damn thing when it didn’t want to be fixed.

The cracks had formed. A shadow passed over Dimitri’s face, for an instant, just a moment in which Felix wouldn’t even recognise the person in front of him, and then the moment passed. And neither of them said a single word.

And it happened again. And again. And again. Hope couldn’t make Felix say a single word when faced with what felt like watching his best friend die, slowly, in front of him.

Hope that everything would be okay also couldn’t make his best friend reach out to him. There was no cry for help. Just silent moments when neither of them could even breathe or look at each other but neither of them said a word. Hope couldn’t mend something like that.

Felix had clung to hope the whole time and at this point...he’d given up. There was no helping someone who didn’t want to be helped, no effort he could go to that would help enough. At least, nothing that wouldn’t drive him into the ground himself.

He kept telling himself that he’d given up, anyway. But he went back, day after day. Day after day, he shared empty conversations with Dimitri and hoped that today would be the day something would change. So he tried. Again and again.

And again. And again.

A greeting. The same tired smile, echoed on Dimitri’s face. The shadow of something more alive momentarily tricked him into thinking recovery was just around the corner, and the inevitable pain in his chest when he realised it was the same smile as the day before and the day before that.

Empty words he never remembered. Idle small talk that meant nothing at all. Cold, emotionless motions disguised as the friendliness they used to share. Felix felt like it lost conviction every time, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop. He didn’t know who he was trying to fool. Maybe himself.

He felt terrible about it all - he had been Dimitri’s best friend for his whole life and yet now there was something between them. Something he couldn’t work out, couldn’t overcome. The only thing he could do was hope, and hope could do nothing at a time like this.

But still...sometimes, it felt like the sun would break through the clouds. When the smiles they shared were somewhat genuine. When the words between them turned warm, even for just a moment. When Dimitri chuckled and just for a second he sounded like he used to and Felix’s stomach would jump to his throat.

And equally, the longing glances. The silences. The moments where pain went unsaid but not entirely misunderstood. The moments like these were few and far between, but Felix lived for them. He craved them. If they didn’t happen...he would never have stuck around so long.

But there he stayed. Hoping like the absolute fool he was.

-

Ingrid could see he was on the edge of something. Something she didn’t want to see come to pass. Actually, they could all see it. Dimitri was standing on the edge he’d been standing on for years now.

Yet it...it almost wasn’t him she worried for. Everyone knew that Dimitri was facing down the void and couldn’t quite turn away. Every single one of them knew - had known for months, or maybe years. If he started to slip, started to fall, everyone knew what to look out for. Everyone would be there to pull him back.

(This was all a metaphor. Ingrid hoped beyond all hope that the cliff edge, the void, all of that was meant to be a metaphor. It would never happen. He never would. He cared too much, even through the distance he’d put between him and them.)

No, she wasn’t worried for Dimitri. She worried for Sylvain. She worried for Felix. She worried for herself.

Every day, every week, every month, they chipped away a little piece of themselves, part by part, in the hope that things would one day go back to how they used to be. They patched themselves up as well as they could, but one day…

She absolutely did not blame Dimitri for any of this. He never asked them to help. They tried to help anyway, and piece by piece, moment by moment, they sacrificed themselves to something none of them could fathom.

Ingrid couldn’t see it, couldn’t hear it. Like those metaphors for explaining situations like this, she sometimes likened the problem to a monster, or a big black dog. Or maybe a cat, that took a swipe at her every day, not envisioning the day that there would be nothing left to take.

It was subtle. She didn’t notice at first, the way she drew away from other things. The way she took time she used to use for herself and changed to make it for others. Sacrificing herself, day by day, for happiness that never seemed to come.

When she mentioned it to Sylvain, he laughed. “It’s like a bank,” he said, and he threw an arm around her and smiled, because that’s what Sylvain did when he didn’t want to face up to an ugly truth. “We’re investing time now, and happiness will come later.”

“Are you sure?” she’d asked, and he hadn’t answered. Or maybe he had, but the answer meant so little that she hadn’t bothered to remember it.

She knew, of course, that sacrifice for the sake of others wasn’t a bad thing. Self sacrifice was a good trait to have. Selflessness, a willingness to put others before yourself, they were all the same thing put in different words. It was just the connotation of ‘sacrifice’ that made it seem like a bad thing.

Yet she knew that, even if it was a good thing, even if she was meant to hurt herself for the sake of others, she was still only losing right now. She lost her time, and energy. She lost sleep worrying about where things were going to end up. Whether anything would be okay ever again.

She was sacrificing herself, and she felt like it was to no avail. So was Sylvain, so was Felix. And each time they gave a piece of themselves to Dimitri, he gained nothing, but they lost themselves more and more.

Sometimes she didn’t recognise Felix, and that was why she worried so. It wasn’t her job to worry - she shouldn’t have to worry about him. He was a grown man, he could take care of himself. But out of all of them, she worried for him the most. But he was sacrificing himself, and he didn’t seem to know where to draw the line.

Ingrid didn’t want to be angry at him, or angry at Dimitri. She couldn’t be angry at either of them, really. They were only doing what they could (except Dimitri would say he wasn’t doing enough, if she were to ask him). Only doing what they wanted to do (Felix, for one, would say he didn’t want to, that actually he wasn’t doing anything at all, but he’d always been like that, with a little less tiredness).

But she was tired. She was tired of watching everyone she loved give themselves up to the beast in the dark that no one would name. She was tired of worrying, tired of sacrificing. Tired of being tired.

She would not let any one of them, herself included, sacrifice themselves to a cause they couldn’t articulate. It wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t.

-

Dimitri was perfectly aware that his life had...not exactly gone as planned. That he was stuck in something he couldn’t quite see the end of, couldn’t reach the bottom of to push himself back up again.

He’d gone down the wrong path, somewhere along the line, and he’d sunk somewhere without realising. He’d forgotten to reach out and let someone pull him out.

Except that was the wrong way to think about everything. Because the way he’d often described it to himself was as if he was wading through a bog, or sinking into mud that seeped into his bones and made him so, so cold. But it wasn’t like that.

It wasn’t a monster or beast that needed to be overcome. It wasn’t a sickness that kept him in bed. It wasn’t a sky without stars or a void that yawned on into eternity.

It was a pinprick of light, so far away that he’d forgotten how to see it. It was a blanket that suffocated and constricted, and filled his head with a fog he couldn’t understand or break through. It was a rumble under his skin that wouldn’t go away.

It was a path he’d managed to find himself walking with no memory of how he got there or how to return. No knowledge of if he even could.

But what he did know was that it wasn’t good. It wasn’t pleasant, to watch everything drift away. To see, plain as anything, everyone he knew attempting to reach out when he couldn’t figure out how to close the gap.

He had to overcome it. Dimitri knew that. And it began with “I think I need your help.”

At first, he couldn’t believe it was so simple. Six words, and Felix was there. He said them again for a different person and they were there too. Ingrid. Sylvain. It was so...easy. He could breathe. He could smile. He could feel like time was moving forwards again, without worrying about if he needed to stand still and watch the world go by. (How had he stood still for months, years, and not realised he wasn’t taking in a single sight?)

That was only at first. It turned out that overcoming everything that had held him back for so many years wasn’t as easy as a handful of words and three wonderful friends. Company couldn’t break all his old habits, or the ways of being he’d become used to.

But that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that it was hard, that it didn’t come the instant he tried something that actually worked (he’d been trying forever, of course, even when he was too exhausted to do much at all. He’d been trying so hard, but overcoming everything took time, and perhaps more than a little luck). It didn’t matter, because when he fell back into an old habit, he didn’t have to break it on his own.

Ingrid saw that he was awake when she was on a night shift - she invited herself over the following night and made him go to bed. And then she did it the next night, and the next, and she felt bad that she had to treat him like a child to get him to do anything but he was endlessly grateful.

Sylvain invited him out to lunch. Then, on the way home, he went to the store and went round and found just about every kind of long-lasting food that Dimitri had ever enjoyed eating. He would later learn that Ingrid had seen that his cupboards at home were empty, but then all he could see was a friend looking out for him. Changing his life in ways Dimitri couldn’t put into words.

And Felix...Felix talked. They’d talked every day for years, practically every day of their lives, but this was real. This was real in a way it hadn’t been for a long time. Felix had never, ever, in all their lives, been a particularly verbose person. He had things to say, but he said them quickly and never at length.

But now, Felix talked. He talked about hopes for the future, fear of failure, every way he had hurt and healed over the last few years. Everything Dimitri had missed, somehow, without even realising it.

They were little things. Little moments where someone else helped him breathe in, and he had to figure out how to breathe out on his own. And suddenly he didn’t have to stand alone. Suddenly, his mind caught up to the fact that he’d never been standing alone.

And maybe it wasn’t a pitched battle, and there were some things Dimitri knew he couldn’t overcome on his own. But that didn’t mean he had to be able to.

-

Sylvain realised, now, that things were going to be okay in the end. Maybe they always would have been fine. Maybe Dimitri was always going to pull through and come out the other side. Maybe it only seemed like that now he had a different perspective.

It did seem sort of inevitable, sort of funny that they’d ever worried, when he saw the way everything was now. Laughter filled the room; it was the end of the year, and for the first time in weeks they’d all managed to get together in one place.

Ingrid was sat at the edge of the too-small sofa (it was for two people, bought at a time when Felix clearly wasn’t ever feeling optimistic about company), on the arm. That left three of them to fit on something that was far, far too small, and that meant that Felix kept pushing Dimitri onto the floor.

“It’s cold down here,” he said, letting out a short groan and pulling himself to his feet again to try and seat himself once more.

“Tough,” Felix said, and the harshness to his words didn’t reach his voice or his face. He was smiling in that strange way that Sylvain had only ever seen when Dimitri was involved.

Dimitri got a thoughtful look on his face and his eyes flicked from Ingrid to Felix to Sylvain and then back to Felix. There was a little glint in his eyes that Sylvain didn’t trust, and he suddenly felt like maybe he should not be sat on this sofa if he wanted to remain unbruised.

He was right. Just as he hurriedly vacated his seat, Dimitri practically launched himself onto the sofa, clearly planning on the force knocking Felix out of his chair and onto the floor. Unfortunately, that wasn’t how physics worked, and all three of them let out a cry as the sofa toppled backwards and hit the floor.

Sylvain, for one, wasn’t going to help any of those idiots. Nope, he was definitely just going to laugh at them from a distance and maybe send a photo to their one mutual friend. Well, that was, until he saw how they’d landed.

While Ingrid had fallen sideways as the sofa fell backwards, Dimitri and Felix had...not. And they were quite close. Yeah, maybe that was the slightest bit too intimate for the one coworker they’d all had the first time they had a summer job.

But hey, it was funny what perspective could do. Because Dimitri didn’t seem at all aware of what this looked like, with him on top of Felix, pinning him to the floor. And it was funny that he didn’t quite seem to grasp exactly how Felix felt about that.

The evening together was good, despite all the mishaps that bordered on violence and when the person Felix lived underneath came by at two in the morning to ask them to maybe be quiet (apparently Felix thought that savoury ice cream would be a good idea and Sylvain and Ingrid had very, very strong feelings about this).

Good was the best way to describe it, honestly. But it also wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to describe the warmth of his feelings, the relief at seeing everything turn out okay. It wasn’t enough to cover the faint feeling of regret over everything they’d missed out on as they’d all drifted apart, if only for a while.

So it was mixed, but it was also good. Far better and far worse than just that one simple word, but good nonetheless.

And looking back on the night with a little bit of perspective, no more than a year later, Sylvain should have seen that things wouldn’t be smooth from there. They didn’t always understand each other, didn’t always say the right things or make the right motions. Sometimes they hit a snag and realised that even after knowing each other their whole lives, they didn’t actually know everything about each other.

Sometimes things would be hard, and they’d get in each others’ way and shout and it would be followed with a sullen, shocked silence that couldn’t quite believe what had been said (because if there was anything that came from knowing each other well, it was knowing exactly how to hurt each other).

But equally, sometimes things would be good. Better than good. And if there was one thing perspective could give Sylvain a year later, watching two of his childhood best friends move into a life truly together, it was the knowledge that they’d come through the worst of it and out the other side. For good.


End file.
